Mother's Day

The weekend has been packed with wonderful memory making events for our family.  It started with a bridal shower for Danielle, which lead into a girls day shopping and spending time together and moved right into celebrating the college graduation of Tonya this morning. In the midst of those  fun times, there certainly were some low periods such as getting Danielle out of the apartment at college with her stuff and the flood of this morning at our house in Richmond.

Since all of the girl folk were already in Huntsville, the men folk  (including Tonya's dad) were to leave early this morning for Huntsville for Tonya's graduation. So as they arose this morning, they were greeted with heavy rain, flooded cars in the street, including the car they were going to take to Huntsville.  It had rained so hard that there was about 3 feet of water in the streets and it appeared very doubtful as to whether they could even get out of the neighborhood.

Darrell rang me at 5:30am letting me know the situation.  I immediately gathered the girl troops there in the apartment and we began to pray.  Within the hour, the guys were on their way, having driven through water up to the hood of our Navigator. Later, Darrell said that after he called us, within about 5 minutes, the rain had slowed down, so much so, they were able to attempt to leave the neighborhood.  We had a miracle as God showed His strength and answered our prayers immediately.

With all of these activities, Mom's Day has seemed just an after thought event.  But when I reflect on how these last couple of days were spent, it has been my day as a mom......spending time with my kids, watching them interact, share, challenge, encourage and a couple of times, at odds with each other.  So I feel blessed to have spent time with all of my children this weekend.  We did miss Trav, our son-n-law and two other grandchildren.

I was sharing with Sonny (a widower since the death of the Sonya and Tonya's mother when they were 8 yrs. old) about fussing at all of the girls, barking out orders regarding packing the car, cleaning the apartment and being ready on time the next morning for graduation.  Sonny's reply was that "that's what moms do". It made me smile, cause I thought he was right.  Just because my girls are all grown now, there are still those moments that the defined relationship of mother and child still have order, roles and boundaries.  No matter how old the children, the mother is still a mother.

So we honor mothers on this special day in all sorts of fashions.  When we lived in Latin America, this particular holiday was very special.  It was a day in which mothers were lavished with gifts such as washers, dryers, refrigs, microwaves and other large ticket items.  When I think back on those types of gifts that I saw given, most were items that eased the load of work in their role as mothers, enabling them to carry on meeting the needs of the family.  I never saw a mother bothered by this and all felt blessed and honored.

So as we are blessed with another Mother's Day with children who are another year older, they are still our babies regardless of how old they are.  Find a quite moment and read the sweet book "Love you forever" by Robert Munsch with some tissues close by and sing over all of your children the repeating phrase in the book....."I will love you forever, I'll like you for always. As long as I am living, my baby you will be."  That makes us mothers.....regardless of how our children came to us......newborns or nearly grown, they are our babies to be loved forever.